2 Timothy 3:10

‘But YOU are familiar with my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, patient endurance,’

Note the emphatic ‘you’. Paul knows that Timothy is not like these false teachers, if for no other reason than because he is familiar with Paul’s life and ministry. He knows what the genuine article is like. He is familiar with what Paul teaches, he knows how he behaves, he knows what his fixed purpose is, he knows the quality of his faith, he knows how longsuffering he is, he knows the love with which he is filled, love for God and love for the elect (compare 2 Timothy 2:10), and he knows his patient endurance and fortitude. All this should make absolutely clear to Timothy the difference between him and the false teachers, between the true and the false.

These are not the boasts of a man seeking to boost his own ego, but the words of a man under sentence of death who has reviewed his life and knows what he is, and who is reminding Timothy of those happy days when as a young man he had first come into contact with him (Paul) and had been moved by observing his life and what he saw of him to a new dedication. Meeting Paul and seeing what he was and what he had experienced had changed his life, and Paul now says, remember Timothy, for what convinced you then is still equally true today. So go back to your foundations.

‘Are familiar with.’ The verb originally meant ‘to follow up, trace out’ but came to mean ‘are cognisant of, are familiar with’ as used for example in the papyri.